Practicing Patience

An association we have with India are the Hindu ascetics performing feats of endurance. Last Friday evening, I could practice too in emphasizing calmness, self-control, and the willingness or ability to tolerate delay.

We were invited to an important business dinner at the Hotel Windsor Manor here in Bengalooru*. We are staying at the Meridian, which is not far away from the Windsor Manor. We ordered our driver to pick us up 15 minutes prior to the dinner. It was heavily raining, traffic was dense and the driver did barely understand English (or at least my interpretation of it). Things turned soon from bad to worse and we reached the Windsor Manor with 40 minutes delay - that is, it took us 55 minutes to get there. After the dinner we decided to return to our hotel by foot. It took 7 minutes.

However, sometimes forbearance is amply rewarded. The dinner place was spectacular and the quests at the table were charming and witty.



Talking about India and its culture - Thanks to British trade relations with India and then nearly two centuries of British rule, several hundred Hindi words have come into the English language, including familiar ones like guru (1800), bungalow (1676), veranda (1711), jungle (1776), juggernaut (1841), loot (1788), thug (1810), shampoo (1762) and pajamas (1800). However, patience is of Latin origin.

* On November 1, Karnataka's state chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy announced that the name of India's silicon hub Bangalore will be changed to Bengalooru from January 2007.